Museveni walks against corruption? Who is the Vampire-in-Chief?

Uganda is not a serious country. Many of the Opposition politicians who come out frequently to speak on different political subjects tend to wander off into small personal stories and garrulous banter, or explode into inappropriately prolonged laughter, offending cultured sensibilities and reinforcing the picture of a frivolous nation.

For the ruling elite, appearing not to be serious is a style that conceals its ruthlessness. The Bush War generals that make you laugh so many times are the same generals who have engineered a system whose goons have whipped you so many times. A cheerful soft Stalinism.

And we, the citizens, grin when the jokes roll out; we flee when the goons appear. From among us the President hires the villains and also recruits his praise-singers.

Sometimes the praise-singers even appear to have recruited themselves, sounding so disreputable. Take this man called Luutu Mukasa. After making a song of his impaired vision and castigating the NRM for neglecting him, he cringes and fawns and licks the President’s boots. He just doesn’t understand how pathetic he sounds. There are millions of Ugandans who suffer physically and emotionally more than Luutu, but suffer with dignity.

There is no self-respecting general who does not despise injury exhibitionists and such groveling opportunists. Someone ask Luutu, how many voters in his Kampala suburb has he persuaded to support Museveni?

He is in effect playing the compassion card to blackmail Museveni into using taxpayers’ money to reward him for a value that is not there.
Should Museveni literally kick him in the teeth before he realises he is a liability that refuses to go away?

A few of weeks ago, one of our yellow-headed intellectuals lectured his punch-bag host on Top Radio how clever Mr Museveni was.

Yellow intellectual: You see, a ruler who plans to stay in power for a long time deliberately puts aside some tasks for catching voters during his future campaigns. Museveni had done the same with corruption.

Dear Top Radio punch-bag, you must now market the idea that preserving the plague of systematic corruption for over thirty-four years has been a wonderful idea, helping Mr Museveni to justify his rule beyond 2021.

Around the same week, the yellow intellectual was instructing his worshipper on Impact FM that a smart Museveni had deliberately arranged for deceptive protective constitutional provisions (term, age limits) that he planned to knock down and cling to power.

Dear worshipper, learn from now, that under NRM rule, with all the angels guarding Impact FM and Dream TV in attendance, duplicity is a virtue. That is how low we have come.

I am writing on Tuesday. Already, because we are not a serious nation, Ugandans have recorded miles of footage on whether President Museveni should or should not lead the Wednesday walk against corruption.

Ten or fifteen years ago, Gen Salim Saleh tasked gifted Ugandans to define corruption. As far as I recall, the Sh10m prize has never been given out.Was a Bush War general joking again? You laughed; didn’t you?

Or was one of President Museveni’s close family members and political operators ridiculing Ugandans for chattering endlessly about a vice that meant nothing to him?

We are idiots. Otherwise, we would have stopped chattering about the vampire state long ago. So President Museveni is saying: You have slow heads. How can I not despise you? You should have learned that I absolutely hate being pushed. You pester me over something I perfectly understand as if this is your country and not mine. All right, if it pleases you, I am a fellow victim of corruption. Let us all walk. I will even walk as the Victim-in-Chief. I want you to identify for me the villains and help me to catch them. Who is the Vampire-in-Chief?

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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